Bad Weather

October, 10th, 7 PM

October, 11th, 5 PM

October, 12th, 5 PM

“Bad Weather” is a performative sound-art event focusing on Baroque theatre noise machines. The machines are presented in an expanded electro-acoustic setting employing the means of the theatrical presentation. Together with a theatre carpenter, Bumšteinas has re-created a set of wind, rain, sea and thunder imitation devices, identical to the ones that have been used several hundred years ago throughout the European theatres.

In “Bad Weather” the ensemble is using a set of meteorological maps as scores for playing the noise machines and also engaging in stage activities that refer to themes such as Intonarumori of pre-modernist era, forecasting weather of the so-called Little Ice Age, creating artificial tornadoes of sound and gusts of various dry grain, translating different atmospheric processes into the domain of live sound. Conceptual artist Ivan Cheng is invited to write and deliver a special performative libretto for “Bad Weather”.

In Baroque opera noise-machines were only a small part of the bigger theatrical mechanism of illusion, while in “Bad Weather” the whole conceptual climate is created by the same machines which now take the central stage. And what about the singing voice…? The aria is floating around in a de-centralized acousmatic space, looking for the body to pin to.

Arturas Bumšteinas started exploring theatre noise machines in 2012 when he was commissioned to create a work for Deutschland Radio Kultur. His radiophonic composition „Epiloghi. Six Ways of Saying Zangtumbtumb“ was then awarded with “Palma Ars Acustica” prize as a best radio-art creation of the year.